The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan

The One Thing is about narrowing your focus to the One Thing you need to do to make your life easier and bring you closer to achieving your goals. It sounds extremely simple, and it is! This book will help you manage your time, improve your mindset and thinking process, and most importantly, identify the things you need to do every day to help you achieve success.

Summary Notes

Introduction: The One Thing

“Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.”

One misconception held by most people is that success is reliant on going big—it is commonly believed that packing your calendar full of activities and a never-ending to-do list are required to achieve your goals. However, the exact opposite is true. When you go small and focus on the One Thing you need to do right now, you get closer and closer to success, one step at a time.

Focusing on one thing at a time will help you maximize the hours you have in a day by ensuring you do fewer things that have larger effects rather than many things that have smaller effects and more unwanted side effects. Remember, a single domino is capable of bringing down another domino that is 50% larger—so do things one by one and their positive effects on your life will become progressively bigger.

Skills to acquire

Part 1: The Lies: They Mislead and Derail Us

“We tend to act on what we believe even when what we believe isn’t anything we should.”

When a mistruth is thrown around often enough, we begin to believe it. However, these mistruths only confuse and misguide us; they sidetrack us from success as we tend to base important decisions on them. When we stop believing in these mistruths, we will tap into our full potential and be able to accurately identify exactly what we need to do to achieve our goals. We will no longer waste time on the things that do not make a positive impact on our lives.

Many of us act on what we believe even when what we believe isn’t anything we should believe. The following six lies are the most common ones that keep people from achieving success. Once you overcome these lies, not only will you be less stressed and depressed, but you will also notice your productivity and success levels shooting through the roof!

Part 2: The Truth: The Simple Path to Productivity

“We succeed in spite of what most of what we do, not because of it.”

Most of the things we do aren’t the reason we achieve success—in fact, they’re either useless or having a negative impact. Identifying the select few things that help you achieve your goals will ensure you stop wasting time on unnecessary tasks and habits and that you spend your resources on things that make an impact.

When you focus on the One Thing that is most important in your life, you also provide yourself with a framework to create and maintain the habits that will ensure your success. Then, every action you take will enable you to put one foot forward on the path to success instead of detracting from your goals.

Part 3: Extraordinary Results: Unlocking The Possibilities Within You

The three most important aspects of success are purpose, priority, and productivity. Your larger One Thing in life is your purpose and your smaller One Thing is your priority—together, they will drive your productivity. Think of these three aspects as an iceberg. Your productivity is the 1/9th of the iceberg you see above water. This is supported by your priority, which is in turn supported by your purpose.

It is perfectly normal for your purpose and priority to change over time. If that happens, simply direct your focus towards your new purpose and priority. As long as you are focusing on one thing at a time, you will achieve success in whatever you do.

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